[Solved] External Hard Drive.

I recently bought an external hard drive, 500 Gigs, thinking I could put a "mirror image" of my pc on it for back up like with Win 7. But all I could find about this in the Control Panel is "back up files". What I want to do is back up my whole pc especially win 8.1 as I do not have an original disc for 8.1, my original is for win 8.0. So, I have plenty of space now for a back up but I am not sure how to go about it since I no longer see the "mirror image" option in control panel. I could just randomly copy all the system files to my ext hard drive but I thought before I did that I should get a second opinion.
Thanks.

 

Hi Dave. You need a cloned copy of your complete OS . It's not going to boot from random copied Files.
I use Macrium reflect (Free) to clone the complete OS. Very easy to do.

http://filehippo.com/download_macrium_reflect/

 

Ok, thanks Cindy and Dougie. Now I have two options. Life just gets better and better.
Thanks so much and take care folks.

 

I also use an external USB hard drive to backup my Win7 Pro system 64bit.

I highly recommend O&O DiskImage which I've used for years, it makes an image not file-backup.

Product features

• Backup an entire computer with the push of a button
• Backup system and hard drives, clone drives and entire disks
• Brand new file-based backup: now twice as fast as ever before – backup and restore individual files and/or folders
• Direct creation of VHDs
• Monitoring and warning of security risks
• Incremental/differential backup: back up only the changes
• Easily restore files, folders, drives and disks
• System restore onto different hardware (M.I.R.)
• Create a Windows Boot system directly from within the program with driver integration
• Plug-and-play: Selected files and folders are automatically backed up and synchronized
• Supports Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7 and Vista

It comes with a feature to make a DiskImage Boot CD with the full program using your OS. This is what I use to make my image Win7 Pro 64bit backup. Worth every cent.

It also allows you to mount your image as a drive so you can recover individual files (copy/paste).

When I was using WinXP, twice I did a full reinstall by booting to the CD and recovering the last backup. My rig booted without a problem.

Some safety hints:

• Have a good (non-free) Antivirus installed and run a full scan BEFORE making image (you do not want to backup a virus)
• Always set verify after making the image, it's too late if you recover a bad backup